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History > 18th-century Britain, 1714–1815 > Britain from 1742 to 1754 > The rule of the Pelhams

Defeating the rebellion also strengthened the position of the Pelhams. In February 1746, George II attempted to replace them with Granville but failed. Thereafter Henry Pelham and Newcastle insisted upon and received the king's full confidence. The attempted invasion widened once again the gulf between the Whig and Tory parties. The Whigs became for a time more united, and the Tories did badly in the general election of 1747, winning only 110 seats. The only serious opposition Pelham faced after that date came from the heir to the throne, Frederick, prince of Wales. Although Frederick had abandoned the Opposition in 1742, his impatience to succeed to the throne soon prompted him to drift back into political intrigue against his father and his father's ministers. He claimed to be motivated by some of Lord Bolingbroke's political ideas. In 1738, during Frederick's earlier phase of opposition, Bolingbroke had written The Idea of a Patriot King, arguing that a future ideal monarch could unify and purify the nation by seizing the initiative to abolish faction and ruling over an administration based on virtue rather than on party. Frederick's avowed commitment to a nonparty government attracted Tory as well as a few Whig MPs to his support in the late 1740s. But their schemes and hopes were dashed when Frederick died in 1751. His eldest son, George (the future George III), became heir to the throne, and serious opposition to Pelham effectively ceased. Debate in Parliament became so muted, one politician wrote, that a bird might have built its nest in the Speaker's wig and never be disturbed.

Both Pelham and Newcastle were overshadowed by their more famous predecessor Robert Walpole and by their charismatic successor, William Pitt the Elder. Like Walpole, both brothers regarded themselves as staunchly Whig though their ideology was by no means clear-cut. Like Walpole, they had little enthusiasm for British involvement in European wars. They helped to negotiate the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748), which ended the War of the Austrian Succession. Like Walpole, too, the Pelhams sought to reduce the national debt and to keep taxation on land low. But unlike Walpole, they avoided corruption; both lost rather than made money during their political careers. And Henry Pelham was more interested in domestic reform than Walpole had been.

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